Monday, April 2, 2012

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

For any of you with children or grandchildren, there is a very amusing book about giving a mouse a cookie. Then he wants a glass of milk to go with it, and a napkin, which he makes a puppet out of and then something else and so on. Our kids are married and in college so I don't exactly recall the whole story but essentially one silly thing let to another silly thing, and so goes this latest collection of my work.

It all started with the New Year and a determined effort to try yoga. It turns out I love yoga and so I got a really nice mat to go to class with. Well with money spent on a really nice mat, you need a really nice mat bag. And with all those hand dyes I made last summer just sitting there, it just made sense. So here is my yoga mat bag.

It holds my mat, towel, water bottle and other small items that I take to class. It is unique and I love carrying it to a place I have come to enjoy very much. It is basic strips pieced together in no particular order and then cut and resewn and so on and so on. I added a sturdy webbed nylon handle and tada!

A bit of random line stitching with a walking foot to quilt it together breaks up the straight lines.

Of course, I left some of the collect hand dyes lying around on my work table for a while and decided to make something out of those leftovers.

With a Timtex base, I fused some hand dyed fabric and then thread sketched on the top. I then fused the back on and edge stitched the petals to make them into a bowl shape. I like them, they are fun and functional and I think perhaps will come in handy on Mother's Day.

Here is a close up of the thread sketching. I think I used 5 different colors on the petals and yellow, pale orange and purple circles in the center.

It was so easy that I decided to make another.

Then I decided to make a bigger one with more colors of thread and even some metallic thread to give it some shine.

Here is the back and where I missed a bit with stitching, I just used a little paint to match the fabric. Super Easy.

Okay, so now the hand dyes are getting smaller but I still like the colors so I decided to make a little art quilt with them. I had to add a couple of colors but that was okay I was still playing with my hand dyes and mentally making excuses that soon I would run out of hand dyes altogether (highly unlikely) so I should order more PFD fabric.

Anyway, here is the next project.

I used a snow dye that I bought from Lisa Reber and Dippity Dyes as the sky and the rest are my own hand dyed fabrics. I machine quilted it and added some beads and sequins.

There are various size seed beads, twisted bugle beads and pressed glass flowers backed with sequins.

Notice the border. It is another snow dye from Dippity Dyes. It just seemed to go with it. In fact I liked it so much that my next two projects were made using it as inspiration.

Also, I mounted this on an 11 X 14 canvas that I painted with periwinkle, a mixture of magenta and purple and then washed in metallic indigo blue. It looks iridescent in person. I wish I knew how to photograph that better. Anyway, it highlights the beads just the way I wanted it to.

Now, for the rest of the border fabric, which was a fat quarter I found in a bin on the floor at Lisa's booth, I have two projects underway. Stay tuned so see how it ends up. So far I am liking both pieces and will post them as soon as I complete them. Thanks for stopping by and feel free to leave any comments about my series of random work.

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About Me

As far back as I can remember, I have always loved fabric. Having a mother and grandmother who sewed very well I was taught early about a sewing machine. I went through the usual stages - doll clothes, my clothes, prom dress, home decor, baby items and clothes for my children. I dabbled in various other media and tried my hand at several crafts. I always returned to my sewing machine and fabric. And over time, I developed some pretty good skills.
Then one day a few years ago during graduate school I met a woman who introduced me to art quilting magazine and I was hooked. I poured over that magazine for hours. I realized that all the other things that I had tried over the years would still apply as I worked my way into art quilting. I now make mixed-media art quilts. I've decided that I will only use my machine and my valuable time to make what I cannot buy. Unique one-of-a-kind pieces that bring me a sense of peace and accomplishment. So, after a few years of experimenting, I launched this blog so I could meet some other fabric enthusiasts as I make my way through my random acts of piece.